26 November 2007 :

the number of suspended death sentences handed down this year in China surpassed that of immediate executions for the first time, reflecting the policy of "applying the death penalty to only a small number of extremely serious offenders", the Chief Justice Xiao Yang said.
Xiao attributed the shift towards what he called a more prudent use of the death penalty to the Supreme Court's resumption of the right to review all death penalty decisions made by lower courts. That right resumed on Jan 1, 2007, ending the court's 24 year absence in approving many of China's execution verdicts.
Xiao, the president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), did not provide any statistics concerning death sentences at the national work conference on judicial reform. He said the reform ensured that "all defendants were equal before the law" and unified the "judicial scale" in applying death sentences. "It also strengthens the protection of human rights in the judicial field," Xiao said.